Saturday, November 5, 2011

[This is the standard notification I put at the head of every guest post notifying you that it is a guest post. This one is written by noted archaic concept "the pirate king." -Ed.]

[Comic title: MTV Generation; alt text: If you identified with the kids from The Breakfast Club when it came out, you're now much closer to the age of Principal Vernon.]

Oh look, it's white hat guy! Hello white hat guy! Does anyone remember white hat guy? He first appeared in this comic, and has since appeared in three others. His character has no consistency whatsoever! Even less so than black hat guy or beret man.

So apparently in this one, White Hat Guy is a crotchety old person. Or it seems that way. Randy is once again pointing out to us that time continues to pass even during the years you spend zoned out on the internet. Yes, the MTV generation is in their forties, blah blah, people get old. The conclusion of the comic doesn't seem to make much more sense than White Hat's initial premise.

"No, it's this NEW generation of kids who are spastic idiots!" Randy cries. So I guess Randall is really the crotchety old man here. This joke is tired and overused, and randall's delivery, as usual, lacks any and all creativity.

Ooh! But look at the use of perspective in the first panel! The tweenster is faded out, so you can distinguish him from a hovering midget! Or maybe they're in the future and that's a hologram, I don't know.

Also, I'd like to point out that the alt text is yet another chance for Randy to point out how dated movies and shows he liked when he was a kid are. He does this again and again and again. Face it Randy, you're getting old.

Posted by
Rob

24 comments:

I didn't see this as another of Randall's "I'm an ancient twentysomething, OMG can you believe I'm not a child anymore" strips. He wasn't in the MTV generation and nothing in here really references anything in his childhood.

Mostly the comic is about Randall believing something about our culture that is just wrong. Nobody calls today's teenagers the MTV generation. People born after the 70s are all too young for the description and everyone knows it. I have no clue where Randall could possibly have heard anyone call today's youth the MTV generation, and I'm kind of afraid that he didn't actually hear it anywhere.

I think this is just a retarded strawman, not rooted in reality, that was only constructed to set up an awful joke. This is one of the worst XKCD's ever.

Randall's only like, what, 26-27? Breakfast Club's from 1985. Even with alt text I don't see it as an "I'm old" strip. His point is basically "you guys in your 40s are old now". It's weird. At face value it's less stupid than him feeling old, but the fact that he feels the need to tell people who were teenagers in 1985 that they're no longer teenagers is perhaps the dumbest compulsion he's ever had. Not only do they know they're adults, they adjusted to the fact over a decade ago.

About half of the people on this thread are arguing that MTV never showed music videos (yawn). And severalotherpeople are like 'ZOMG, who's White Hat Guy?'. This one was quick to suggest that it's an alternate persona of Black Hat Guy, partly because 'Black Hat Guy is teh awsum; lol!' - and partly because sad fools try to create continuity and characterisation in xkcd when clearly there is none.

Then a few people were like 'ZOMG, we feel old because of The Breakfast Club being like 25 years ago; man!'

I don't see how you managed to get ' "No, it's this NEW generation of kids who are spastic idiots!" Randy cries.'He was just saying Mr. White Hat Guy hasn't got a problem with the MTV Generation, but with their kids. Or am I taking it to literally? Am I supposed to try and find the super-secret hidden meaning in every sentence?

I went out to the local chess society today and every single member was a jew. A kike. A sheeny.

Here Rabbi Cohen was matching wits with Mayor Levi; there Manager Goldstein performed a gambit on Alderman Meyer; everywhere the Jew darkened the air with his desert tongue and harsh Hebraic syllables, discussing and plotting the darkest crimes of mice and men over the checkered sets.

It was a repulsive festering mass of Judaity and I could hardly race myself to get out. Lest they attempt to charge me by the minute for my very presence there, an Aryan presence that stuck up like a sore thumb among the hook-nosed Hebes and their designs.

May I never come into their presence again. For it is not deigned of man to dig too deep into the secrets of the world, or discover the putrefying, creeping truths that underlie reality.

The only time I've ever heard the term "MTV generation" is in that episode of The Simpsons where Lisa goes "we're the MTV generation, we feel neither highs nor lows" and Homer goes "what's it like" and she responds with "meh."

I can't remember which episode it was, but it was a pretty funny moment so it must have been during The Simpsons' Good Period.

Anon 6:36, clearly this comic is about terrorism. Anon 6:43, Megan has always been Randall's way to voice the opinions he doesn't want to believe in, but secretly does. She's always the one who's "right", which probably reflects on his actual relationships.

And rob, I'm mostly saying this is an age comic because of the alt text, but I guess it's not really since it's not his age group at all. It's sortof like he's making the observation that time passes.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

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